Six Strokes Under

by Roberta Isleib

  The deputy commissioner of the LPGA started the meeting off by introducing Alice and the other LPGA staff in attendance, then the head honcho of the Plantation Country Club. We clapped politely for each of them.

  "There will be two waves of tee times on both courses tomorrow and Wednesday, at seven-thirty and eleven a.m.," the commissioner explained. "As you know, a random draw will determine your pairings. After Wednesday, half the field will be cut, with the remaining golfers arranged in threesomes according to their cumulative scores." The dreaded cut. Slamming the trunk, the players on the PGA Tour called it. Over the last year, Mike and I had gotten very familiar with the concept. Nothing else could bleed the air out of a dream quite so fast.

  "You must be physically inside the roped area around the tee at your group's starting time. Otherwise, you will be assessed a two-stroke penalty. When you physically leave the roped area around the scoring tent, your card is ours. You will not be allowed to return to sign the card or change a score at that point." All the girls competing in the tournament were familiar with these rules. Still, even on the professional Tour, it was amazing how many top players had disqualified themselves with some dumb blunder over the course of their careers.

  "We have a relatively small field this year," the commissioner continued. "Slow play will not be tolerated." I noticed Mary rolling her eyes in Kaitlin's direction. "You have lots of running room, so move smartly. If you see an official in a rules cart, you can assume you are being timed. Any player who shoots eighty-eight or higher will be automatically withdrawn from the tournament." I didn't even want to think about that hideous possibility. Eighty-eight might sound acceptable to an eighteen hand-icapper in the qualifying round of her club championship, but oh, my God, what a humiliating way to end the Q-school experience.

  "Just a couple more friendly reminders," said the commissioner. "Each threesome will be assigned two carts. At no time may you and your caddie ride in the cart together during the play of a hole. However, both of you may ride from the green to the next tee. Second, volunteers with radios will be posted on holes three, six, nine, twelve, fifteen, and eighteen. They can call a rules official for you if needed. Please, ladies, remember that it's a bad idea to accept rulings from spectators." The players around me laughed. That seemed an obvious and gratuitous reminder, but I knew how common sense could completely evaporate in tense tournament conditions.

  "Third, a list of nonconforming equipment is posted on the bulletin board. The use of one of these drivers in USGA competitions is the grounds for disqualification. Finally, your practice balls are provided courtesy of Ti-tleist. They'll be donated to junior girls' golf programs after this week. They're very nice balls, but please don't take them home. We get very upset if they disappear into your bag." The girls at my table laughed again.

  "Only thirty of you will go on to the final round of the LPGA Q-school As far as we're concerned, you're all winners. Play your best and good luck." The tears that sprang to my eyes surprised me. It was really happening. I was no longer lying home on that gingham bedspread, looking at the posters of Nancy Lopez and Freddie Couples holding their trophies, dreaming that one day I'd be there, too. This was my chance: I promised myself to enjoy every minute of it. Okay, at least some of them, I bargained.

  Before heading over to the Bobcat course, I called Dr. Turner's office. His receptionist was delighted to offer me an appointment the same afternoon at five p.m. She was probably afraid she wouldn't get a paycheck this month if she didn't book a few more suckers into his schedule. I'd have time to pick Laura up at the airport and still make my pseudo-session with Turner.

  "May I ask your chief complaint?" the receptionist said. "You certainly aren't required to tell me this on the phone, but it does help the doctor prepare for you."

  I vacillated for a moment about how much to say. I already regretted having given my real name. "I'd rather not.... I'm not really comfortable...."

  "Oh, I'm so sorry," she said, her voice trembling with concern. "But don't worry. You've done just right. He's very good with that problem." She said that problem in the same tone I'd heard TV announcers use when they talked about feminine hygiene products. I wondered what she thought my problem was. I wondered how much it would cost me to get Laura to pose for an hour as the possibly traumatized Cassandra Burdette.

  I hung up and hurried over to pick up a cart for my 9:15 practice round. At the tournament office, I learned I had been assigned to play with Jessica Anderson and Julie Atwater. This was good news and bad. Maybe I'd have the chance to casually inquire about her problems with her father—if it were possible to casually inquire about such problems. On the other hand, the golf course had to be my primary focus. If all went well, I'd be playing three rounds on the Bobcat course this week, and I needed to feel comfortable and prepared. I lugged my bag to the cart barn and spotted my playing partners.

  "I'm Cassie," I said, reaching out to shake hands. Julie was a big-boned girl with big boobs and wide hips. She wore a turquoise straw hat and pearls, and a fine sheen of sweat on her forehead. Her shirt gapped open between buttons just enough to show a flash of purple lace as she returned my handshake.

  "Howdy," she said. "Good luck today. I guess we'll be sharing a cart."

  "Great to meet you," said Jessica, stepping up next to Julie. She was dwarfed beside Julie, small and slight with a big smile and quick, birdlike hand movements. "That's my dad, Harvey." A balding, middle-aged man with a prominent potbelly, thin legs, and knobby knees waved to us from Jessica's golf cart. I hoped he wouldn't slow play down by having a heart attack on the course tomorrow. Pure sour grapes, I scolded myself. So my own father hadn't expressed the slightest interest in caddying, probably wasn't even aware I was competing at Q-school. Buck up. It could be worse. He could be Leviticus.

  "Aren't you from Myrtle Beach?" asked Julie on the ride over to the first tee. I nodded. "Kaitlin's mentioned you."

  "I don't like the sound of that," I said. "Whatever she said, puh-leeze give me the benefit of the doubt."

  "It's not that bad," she said with a smile that struck me as sincere. "She doesn't have me brainwashed or anything." She pointed to the players in front of us reaching the first green. "Looks like we're good to go here."

  I watched as the other two players hit their drives, Jessica's long and straight, Julie's a wicked slice that dribbled into a bunker on the right side of the fairway.

  "Damn it," she said. "I must be swinging over the top."

  I hit a pop-up fly straight down the middle, though barely past the hundred-and-fifty-yard marker. I joined Julie in the cart for the ride to my ball. Next I skimmed a seven-iron low and ugly down the fairway. Julie stepped on the gas when I'd barely sat down and we lurched toward the green. Once there, Jessica sank a three-footer for birdie and slapped hands with her father. Julie and I both three-putted for bogeys.

  "Number two's a beast," I heard Jessica tell her father as she got into the cart. "With my draw, I'm either in the mounds or the trap. The approach to the green's even worse."

  "You gotta love it, though, honey," said her father, replacing her putter in the bag. "Just being here—what a dream come true." She hugged him before he trotted off toward the next hole. It was going to take every bit of mental toughness I owned to finish this round without feeling pathetic. Julie patted me on the back. "You'll be fine once you settle down into a rhythm."

  The rhythm would have to wait. All three of the players in front of us knocked their approach shots into the pond to the right of the green, promising at least a short delay. Julie and I chatted about her year on the Futures Tour and her disastrous experience at Q-school last year.

  "You already look a hundred times more comfortable than I did," she said. "I never broke eighty either day."

  "Yikes," I said. We watched the girls ahead of us fish multiple balls out of the water. Given the friendly tone of Julie's comments so far, I decided to blunder ahead. "This must be a hard time for you," I offered. "All the extra p
ressure with your dad, on top of just being here."

  "It is."

  "I don't know if you heard this, but I'm the one who found Dr. Bencher last week."

  "You're joking." Now her face looked genuinely shocked. "That must have been horrible."

  "It was. This is awkward, but I hoped you'd talk to me about your experience with him. The sheriff's office seems to think that I'm somehow involved."

  "Get out! They don't think you killed him?"

  I shrugged. "Either that, or I know something that I don't realize I know about who the murderer was."

  "I'll help if I can," said Julie. "What do you need?"

  "Tell me whatever you feel comfortable saying. I guess my biggest question is who would have wanted the guy dead?"

  "Since you're asking me, I assume my father has already come to your mind," said Julie. "I wouldn't have pictured him as a killer, but one never knows. I've found a lot out about him in the past year, all of it news and none of it good."

  I got out of the cart to stretch. "Bencher helped you figure some stuff out?"

  "I only saw the doctor once," said Julie. She wiped the perspiration off her forehead with her golf towel, then waved it in the direction of the clubhouse. "Those idiots with placards want you to believe that there's no such thing as an honest memory. Evil and persuasive shrinks plant thoughts into the weak shells of the women who come for help. In my case, Bencher barely said a word. It was like all this garbage had been bubbling inside me and it took fifty minutes of spewing it out in his office to figure out what I'd been thinking and feeling. You know what I mean?"

  "I think so. Just having someone listen sometimes helps you put words to what's in the back of your mind."

  Julie nodded. "I knew for a long time that there was something wrong with my relationship with my father. Some of the things he did ..." She looked first as though she might cry, then she pulled her lips into a thin line and narrowed her eyes. "But I didn't want to see this too clearly—who wants to think their father is a lech?"

  "Obviously, I don't know you very well, but you seem so different from him."

  "He and Mom split up when I was eight so I've seen very little of him since then. Trust me, there was a good reason Mom dumped him. The better question is why she married him in the first place."

  "So Bencher didn't suggest he'd abused you?"

  "No. The only thing he commented on specifically was how my father had hurt me emotionally. Dr. Bencher was quite clear about that."

  I glanced up toward the green. Two of the three players ahead had dropped their balls outside the hazard and were preparing to chip on. "Do you mind saying how?"

  "He said a good father should start out as the sun in his daughter's life. Then, to allow her to grow into a woman, he has to step back and give her room to connect with other men. He moves from sun to moon." Her laugh was harsh and mirthless. "My father scored oh for two."

  "He said all that in the first hour?" She nodded. I'd droned on for what seemed like months before Baxter offered any comments on the trouble I had with my father.

  "You don't have to answer this," I said, "but what about... ?" I stopped, unsure whether I'd offend her if I said the word lesbian.

  "Aha," she said. "You've stumbled across rumors about my sexuality. My conversion." I shrugged. "Rumors that my interest in men is dead have been greatly exaggerated." She laughed. "Not that it's anyone's business, but talking to Bencher about my father this way raised a- lot of questions all around. It will be a long time before I have them all sorted out."

  "I can understand that," I said. And I could. My own father hadn't done badly on Bencher's first criterion. But then he hadn't just stepped back, he'd taken a nosedive off the face of the earth. He certainly wouldn't qualify as a moon, probably not even a distant planet.

  We stopped talking to hit our second shots. Julie's ball went left this time. I hit a screaming worm-burner, so low it nearly took out two sandhill cranes preening on the mounds, before it skipped into the pond.

  "I think I need to concentrate on what I'm doing here," said Julie. "That's pretty much all I know to say anyway."

  I knew she was right—I, too, should have been paying attention to the landscape of the golf course, getting familiar with quirks and challenges that I'd be facing in the tournament later. Joe would have had my head for my lack of focus. We finished the remainder of the round without further conversation, other than "nice shot" or, following a number of my unfortunate skirmishes with the water, the woods, and the rough, "tough luck." Nothing seemed to be working. I pulled out the note card listing swing thoughts I'd worked on with Joe and Odell back at the Palm Lakes driving range. These short phrases were to be used to help clear messages from mind to body that interfered with a smooth swing.

  "Don't get too technical," Joe had told me. "Your body knows very well what to do. Your mind has to let go, get out of the way, and let your body do its job."

  Whispering "Let it go" produced a snap hook out of bounds on five. Using "Let it flow," I popped two balls in the water on six. By the time we reached the eighteenth green, where Gary had watched me pantomime my putt last night, I was more over par than I even wanted to count.

  "Lucky thing you got that out of your system," said Jessica. "Good luck tomorrow, girls."

  I turned in my cart and prepared to head north to Pate's office and the airport. My cell phone vibrated, letting me know I'd received a message while out on the golf course.

  "Cassie, it's Jack. Sorry I missed you. The time difference is killing me. Good luck tomorrow, Gorgeous, and don't let anyone tell you Budweiser isn't in your training regimen. Have one on me. Let me know how it's going. Take care."

  I whistled all the way to Sarasota.

  Chapter 12

  The sheriff's department was a cream-colored, stucco building with a Spanish-style tile roof, both neater and friendlier-looking than its ambassador, Sheriff Pate. I parked and rolled out into the blanket-heavy heat of the afternoon.

  "I'm here to see Sheriff Pate," I said to the girl at the desk.

  She laughed. "Sheriff Pate? I'll tell him you're here." What the hell was so funny? Given Pate's grumpy disposition, I wasn't surprised that the girl didn't offer me coffee or even a seat. This office seemed unconcerned with public relations. Ten minutes later, Pate arrived and ushered me into a windowless gray room that I could imagine worked well for pressuring reluctant suspects into confessing.

  "Big day tomorrow?"

  "Yes."

  "How'd the round go today?"

  "Fine, thanks." I sure as hell wasn't going to discuss my golf problems with this bozo.

  "Any new thoughts about Bencher?"

  "Honest to God, Sheriff Pate," I said. "I'm doing my best to forget about Bencher. I told you everything I possibly knew. I even made up a few extra details just to make you happy." I could see he didn't find my little joke at all funny.

  "This is serious, Miz Burdette. A man's been killed here."

  "I'm well aware of that, sir. You may remember that I found him."

  "Then until we solve the case and determine that you in fact were not involved, I'd suggest you do your best to cooperate."

  "I'm trying." I didn't want to cry in front of Pate, but it was going to take all the willpower I had to hold back the frustrated tears.

  "I'll look for you over at the Plantation tomorrow," he said. "They may need some extra protection if the protests continue." He sighed as if it were a great burden to have so much responsibility.

  "That's it? I'm free to go?" Pate nodded. I left the building, again infuriated and confused by the man's interrogation. Today, I couldn't discern any real reason for him to have asked me in.

  I felt better the instant I saw the round face and sturdy fireplug shape of Laura Snow getting off the plane. She insisted her size was a by-product of her combination Eastern European peasant and Choctaw heritage, and that it brought many advantages—not the least being a low center of gravity, useful for weathering
windstorms and balancing golf swings. In addition, Laura brimmed with optimism and common sense. At the moment, I needed both.

  "Before we get dinner," I said after extracting myself from her vise grip hug, "we have one quick stop to make. A five o'clock appointment with Dr. William Turner."

  "Who the hell is Dr. Turner?" asked Laura, laughing. "Don't tell me you can't last a whole week without seeing a shrink?"

  "It's been tough here," I pretended to whine. "Without you or Joe."

  "No, really," said Laura. "Who is this Turner and why is he delaying my dinner?"

  "I'll tell you the whole story over a beer later," I said. "But in a nutshell, this guy is a big wheel in the False Memory Consociation. Joe told me about him. So I made an appointment."

  "Joe told you to see him? What do you plan to discuss?" Her worried tone told me this wasn't going to go over easily.

  "Joe didn't send me to see him, he just mentioned that his office is here in Sarasota. I'm thinking of telling him I'm an incest victim."

  "Are you nuts? You're here to play golf—"

  I cut her off before she could work herself into a fullblown rant. "I wouldn't get involved with this if the pork-rind blowhard who calls himself the sheriff wasn't pressuring me. He doesn't have the slightest idea how to solve a murder case, so he just shakes me down every chance he gets, just hoping some random piece of crucial evidence will drop out." I guided the Pontiac off Route 41 into a strip mall that housed a pet store, a deli, and several sorry-looking professional offices.

  "How are you going to pull this off?"

  "I have no idea," I admitted. "Will you go in for me?" Her scowl did not require a verbal translation. "I'll try not to be long."

  Dr. Turner's waiting room was plainer than the one shared by Baxter and Bencher. Metal chairs with thin, blue vinyl cushions lined the walls. A faded travel poster featuring the Eiffel Tower hung above the secretary's desk. If I had to wait long, there wouldn't be much to distract me from counting the fast thumping of my heartbeats.